Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Acrobat/Reader -- Convert Wingdings To Fields

When creating their forms in Word, many people like to use the Wingdings characters for their form fields, such as radio-buttons and check-boxes. They are easier to move around and control, compared to graphic elements, because they are simply textual symbols.
The problem begins when you convert your file to PDF and want to convert them to PDF form fields. Acrobat does not always identify these symbols as form fields, and when it does, it doesn't always assign them the correct form type: Check-boxes can become text fields and radio-buttons can become check-boxes... Which means you then have to make a lot of manual adjustments to get them working correctly.

This issue can now be easily solved using this new tool I've developed which will identify Wingdings characters and convert them into the correct form fields in your PDF file.
The tool can identify 8 different kinds of check-boxes and 7 different kinds of radio-buttons, as can be seen in this list:

Types of recognized Wingdings (click to enlarge)

So let's say we have a simple form with Wingdings boxes that we want to convert to check-boxes:

The original file

After installing the script we can run it easily via the Tools panel, like so:

Accessing the script in Acrobat

The symbols are recognized and the fields generated. When done, the script reports how many fields were added to the file:

We can now see the generated fields in the file:

And interact with them, just like any other fields:

This tool can even be used in the free Adobe Reader (version XI or higher)!

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About This Site, and Me

Hi! Welcome to my website, dedicated to the various custom-made tools I've created, mostly for working with PDF files.
My name is Gilad D., and I'm a software developer, specializing in creating the perfect solution for your needs, to make your work easier and more efficient. I do everything from small scripts in PDF forms, to dynamic stamps, to scripts that split files and extract their content, to entire stand-alone applications that can process hundreds of files...

Many of the tools available here can be purchased directly by using the "Buy Now" button at the top of the post. Unless otherwise mentioned, all tools are compatible with the current version of the application for which they were created, including at least 3 prior versions, and will run on both Windows and Mac computers!

In case of any doubts or questions, I can always be contacted at try6767@gmail.com (I post in various forums under the nickname "try67").